In March 2011, a Royal decree in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia announced a housing scheme. The plan to build 500,000 homes over the next years is part of a series of official steps to improve social welfare and to ease the country‘s housing shortage. The programme adresses different regions of the Kingdom. AS+P has been commissioned together with the local partner SAUDCONSULT, to elaborate master plans for a total area of 1,500 ha located in the Eastern Region. AS+P‘s comprehensive scope included a wide range of services, from theoretical studies to planning studies, resulting in concept designs in scale 1:2,000 and with accompanying details for selected areas. AS+P developed integrated urban master plans adressing the fields of urban and landscape planning and public community facilities on various levels. The aim was to create basically self-contained residential quarters whenever the urban context was not supporting the site. Once completed, the six planning areas will accomodate more than 100,000 residents being served by educational, cultural and religious facilites. The residential units will be embedded in a hierarchic system of open and recreational spaces. Whereas SAUDCONSULT was in charge of utility and infrastructure planning, AS+P was responsible for all conceptual planning works. All concepts were approved by the client and serve as the basis for the subsequent detailed designs eventually leading to the tendering of conctruction works.